Error Booting VMWare vCenter Server Appliance 6.0u1 after Deployment

The VCSA appliance deployment has changed to be a Microsoft Windows only affair. Unless you perform a few steps first you could end up with the issues below.

PROBLEM:

During the deployment of the VCSA appliance you get the following error messages displayed:

Failed to set the time via NTP. Details: Internal Error. Code 1

Failed to set hostname.

Verify that provided ntp servers are valid.

If you continue the installation upon booting the VCSA appliance you'll see the following error on the console screen:

"failed to start services. Firstboot Error"

RESOLUTION:

To resolve these issues before the installation of the VCSA you should do the following during the wizard:

1. Must only set one DNS server at deployment, you can add more later once the VCSA has been deployed.

2. Must only set one NTP server at deployment, you can add more later once the VCSA has been deployed.

3. You must have created the DNS record for the VCSA appliance (forward and reverse) before you start the installation and check that the DNS servers can resolve these.

4. If you are deploying to a vDS (virtual distributed switch) you need to ensure it is a "ephemeral port group", after the installation you can move it to a static or dynamic port group if you need to.

(I found that this was not the case, as long as the above requirements were met, you did not need to attach the VCSA appliance to a ephemeral port group during the build and it would start correctly at the end.)

5. Once built successfully, go to this URL: https://hostname.domain.com:5480/